‘She’s dead, she’s dead’: Jan. 6 video has new angle on Ashli Babbitt shooting

A video timeline produced by Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol protesters shows a clearer picture of the shooting death of Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt by a U.S. Capitol Police officer.

The just-released video, “J6: A True Timeline,” shows the moment Babbitt attempted to enter the House Speaker’s Lobby and was shot by Lt. Michael Byrd in the neck or shoulder.

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“She’s dead, she’s dead,” a protester cries out. “They just killed a girl,” yelled another.

Drawn from official video, police body cams, surveillance film and the videos of those in the protest, the new timeline tries to put into focus the chaos of the day and include some of the context left out of media summations and the report released by the House Jan. 6 investigation.

It highlights the aggressiveness of both sides, and especially shows examples of a handful of police forcefully holding back the crowds attempting to protest the election of Joe Biden as president. Video shows officers shooting rubber balls and chemicals into crowds.

It also spotlights the deaths of three other protesters that day.

The shooting death of Babbitt, 35, takes center stage at about 44 minutes into the video. “The story of that gunshot is quite possibly the most tragic story of that day,” said the narrator of the video produced by Alan Fischer, who has been charged in the protest and tied to the Proud Boys.

It shows Babbitt followed by a journalist with her camera running approach the barricaded Speaker’s Lobby. There were three officers there to meet her. Within seconds, there were other protesters behind Babbitt.

The video then shifts to the House chamber and the single gunshot can be heard. The timeline goes back to the lobby where protesters are smashing the glass doors. At one point from the left and inside the lobby, a gun appears.

“There’s a gun, there’s a gun,” shouts a protester.

As Babbitt is pushed inside the chamber, Byrd is shown pulling the trigger. Babbitt is hit and falls back, laying on a Trump campaign flag she was using as a cape.

Officers coming up from the first floor urge the crowd to “back up” as Babbitt is cared for.

“She’s dead, she’s dead, she’s dead,” screams one protester as three officers carry Babbitt down the steps.

The Justice Department investigated the shooting, deciding not to pursue charges against Byrd.

Justice wrote up the incident this way:

“The investigation further determined that Ms. Babbitt was among a mob of people that entered the Capitol building and gained access to a hallway outside ‘Speaker’s Lobby,’ which leads to the Chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives. At the time, the USCP was evacuating Members from the Chamber, which the mob was trying to enter from multiple doorways. USCP officers used furniture to barricade a set of glass doors separating the hallway and Speaker’s Lobby to try and stop the mob from entering the Speaker’s Lobby and the Chamber, and three officers positioned themselves between the doors and the mob. Members of the mob attempted to break through the doors by striking them and breaking the glass with their hands, flagpoles, helmets, and other objects. Eventually, the three USCP officers positioned outside the doors were forced to evacuate. As members of the mob continued to strike the glass doors, Ms. Babbitt attempted to climb through one of the doors where glass was broken out. An officer inside the Speaker’s Lobby fired one round from his service pistol, striking Ms. Babbitt in the left shoulder, causing her to fall back from the doorway and onto the floor. A USCP emergency response team, which had begun making its way into the hallway to try and subdue the mob, administered aid to Ms. Babbitt, who was transported to Washington Hospital Center, where she succumbed to her injuries.”

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The video, said an executive producer, was made to show the public a time-stamped portrayal of the day minus anti-protester bias.

On a web page dedicated to the new video, Executive Producer Jason Rink, wrote, “The small group of collaborators have collected one of the largest repositories of J6 footage in private hands. When the government continued to drag its feet on the release of footage, this group decided to take matters into their own hands. They went about the task of laying out every angle of body cam footage, security footage and footage filmed by citizens, and compiled it in a timeline using metadata and timecode. The result is a view of January 6 from almost every angle, simultaneously, providing a much different story than previously known. Over the past year the filmmakers worked to edit the footage into a concise but accurate documentary which allows people to see the events of the day as they unfolded.”